


Kinematics

by FionnMacFool



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek: maybe we were friends, Derek: spends almost the entirety of this fic searching for Stiles, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Happy Ending, Hinted Canonical Scott/Malia, M/M, POV Derek Hale, Season 6a Fix It, Slow Burn, Some angst, Stiles, coming in clutch: surprise it's love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29028309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FionnMacFool/pseuds/FionnMacFool
Summary: With Stiles taken by the Ghost Riders, Derek returns to Beacon Hills.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 8
Kudos: 80





	1. Bodies In Motion

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy the cherry-picked canon and reimagined rest of it xD
> 
> Also, this work is finished barring a couple scenes I still need to write and some editing and tinkering before each chapter gets posted. But postings should be regular since almost the entirety of this fic—including the ending—is already written ❤

### Prologue

The Rider stands before Stiles, an atmosphere of power and fear whirling against the backdrop of night and, cutting through the maelstrom, the tang of Stiles’ stubbornness. He has made his peace, did all he could with the tools at hand; got to tell Lydia he loved her—he’s been meaning to do that for ages now in a way that wasn’t creepy—with different iterations of the word _love_ and its definitions throughout the years. He's finally settled on a version that fits when the Riders come for him. 

He’s done all he can with the limited information their struggling pack has, most of it he'd inferred himself from the too few straws he has grasped. He knows there was little evidence leading to this. Knew the others couldn't read the portents like he could; clues and instincts he reads like constellations to navigate one's journey. Stiles just wishes, despite logical reasoning to the contrary, he wishes the others had listened to him more. Had believed him. He's gotten them through mad situations before; has felt fear as they battled Dread Doctors and other creatures that came to Beacon Hills seeking power, seeking dominion, seeking legion. He remembers the feeling of relief when the horrors were vanquished. There is no relief tonight.

He does not fight the Rider before him. He knows it is impossible. He knows this because learning how to defeat these Ghost Riders is still on his to-do list; these threatening entities of long hair, long coat, hat, kerchief, and spurs. But it is important to note, dear reader, that Stiles also does not go of his own volition. The motives behind his trajectory are all Stiles can cling to. He didn’t _want_ to go, he’ll be able to say; but he goes all the same.

He’s going, going…

Gone.

### A Far Off Trajectory, Corrected

Derek is in Guatemala when he feels a tug in his gut.

It’s the first time he’s felt the sensation; a heightened sense of urgency, of dread, and over the next few days his emotions pitch and roll. At first, Derek dismisses the feelings as symptoms of being in wolf form for so long. By the fifth day, the emotions disappear altogether.

He’s sitting in an open café on a hillside looking over a lake; a colorful mishmash of claimed land dotting the sloping landscape. Small concrete block homes with corrugated roofing, US-style homes from the families who prefer status and have the money, and loosely organized ranches speckle themselves like a pattern created by a creative hand. He hears the bleats of grass-fed animals, the calls of ranchers, and, far away and beyond the valley, noise from the roads and bigger city. Derek prefers it here, in a valley that reminds him of a comfortable closeness, a swaddling almost, and maybe also like home. Fragrant wood smoke from the kitchens of the homes mix with the moody clouds rolling into the valley he’s dug himself into. Derek sips his drink of the finest hot cacao he's ever had, watching the ripples on the lake surface and the wind through the hills, and dismisses the week-long disturbances in favor of figuring out what it means to be human again. It’s only been a month since he broke wolf form and stood on his own two legs.

He encounters the gut feelings a few more times over the next weeks, the next months. When they leave, he feels relief. Not because the symptoms are gone. It’s more like he feels the relief of whatever was on the receiving end of the dread, the panic. Derek treats the feeling of relief as a signal that things have righted themselves. It reminds him of what he used to feel when he and his pack took on a challenge and won. Back when he had a pack. When he was an alpha. When he mattered.

He imagines he’s connected to the pack and to whatever is going on in Beacon Hills. He imagines the relief as a signal, letting him know all is well, releasing him from duty. Then he remembers he’s not their pack and they’re not his, and he moves on. 

He wishes the phantom gut punches would move on, too.

He’s in Australia when he feels it again.

The gut feelings had subsided enough to where Derek thought they were psychosomatic and could enjoy a new location in peace. He’s made his way to Esperance, to stare at the ocean in a less populated area, and he’s stood in this same spot in the sand for an hour at least—stock-still, hands in his pockets.

His mind, the traitorous organ, begins to think of Jester’s and how nice a hot meat pie with some tomato sauce squeezed on top sounds. He never thought he’d see the day: Derek Hale, eating statewide chain-level cholesterol bombs and loving it. _Hell,_ Derek thinks to himself, _Stiles thinks I eat raw game_ —

The feeling is sudden, but faint, like a familiar scent from an unknown origin. Something is very wrong. There’s panic, fear, and then acceptance. Stubbornness.

And then there is nothing.

The absence is as startling as the feelings themselves. They had warbled through him, like a radio dial tuned by a frantic hand before shutting the noise off completely. Derek stands there, on that beach in Esperance below the cliffs, trying to figure out why it cuts deep that the emotions cut out. It’s what he usually wants—for them to go away. But he’s grown accustomed to that feeling of relief before they quit. There was no relief this time.

Derek climbs into his borrowed Holden and makes his way back to the condo he’s rented. In the safety of the bedroom when he finally crosses that threshold, he opens up his laptop and books the first available flight from Perth to SFO.

* * *

  
  


Beacon Hills looks exactly the same.

It has been one year since he was last in this town, but driving through the downtown grid reveals no changes. Not even a change of business. Or a new exterior paint job.

It’s a Monday at noon. His flight left Perth at one in the morning on Monday. He spent twenty hours in the air and two and a half hours at the Singapore airport for his only stop, before he arrived in San Francisco at 09:30 a.m. of the same day. He has one bag of clothes. He smells like plane. He sat in congested Bay Area traffic for the drive over. And the werewolves he knows best are in school right now. Derek figures he has time to kill and he can interrogate them later as an after school special.

He drives out of the downtown Beacon Hills area, heading out towards the Preserve. The rural highway takes him past a few businesses: a locally famous dairy farm with terrible puns for advertisements, a couple small vineyards still proudly independent from the big alcohol conglomerates, and _there._ Mikey’s. Derek turns off the two-lane highway and stops in front of a tiny structure painted with decades of dust. There are a few old oak trees shading the property; their dead, spiky leaves crunching underfoot. He walks in, deciding on a sandwich for lunch.

“What can I get you?” a gruff voice asks from behind the glass display of meats, cheeses, and pastas. There’s some Malfatti, still made with breadcrumbs consistent with its World War II recipe that locals decided to keep making. Tradition, they said.

“Uh,” Derek begins before he’s interrupted.

“Wow, I haven’t seen your face in a while. Started to think you’d moved away. Or. You know.” It’s Mikey himself behind the counter, graying hair sparser than the last time Derek was in. The owner whistles a quick, two note exchange that Derek supposes means his demise. “You know who I wish would come back through those doors?” Mikey asks, unperturbed by his own dark insinuation.

Derek does know. Anyone who’s ever been to Mikey’s knows. But he says, “Who?” all the same.

“Sophia Loren,” Mikey sighs and gestures to his framed autographed headshot of her, all curves and dark hair. “She used to come in all the time. This was back in the seventies when they were making that movie out in the Sonoma hills and she was just perfect. Sophia Loren is God’s gift to mankind, you know.”

Derek nods, thinks there might be something to missing people, when he recalls a memory of laughter, of yelling, of jokes at his expense but in good humor. Of a red mouth open in triumphant exclamation, warm mahogany eyes dancing in glee. It’s a distant memory now and out of practice of being recalled. 

“Just a sandwich, Mikey. Pastrami, please.”

He eats outside, slow and deliberate, mulling over the flavors of his hometown. The rural city makes him think of rich dirt and dried golden hillside grass and soothing breezes from the bay. Of cold mornings and hot afternoons. It’s a nice canvas for the more colorful characters. The wolves. The hunters. The protectors and the enemies. He wonders where he stands these days, in the fray over the soul of Beacon Hills. Derek still suspects the twisting pain in his gut as the McCall pack calling out for help, or at least of one person calling out. The one person with unfinished business from the last time they were in each other’s presence. The one person who had turned back to acknowledge Derek to make an incomplete goodbye. The pain that had tugged at him so sporadically and sharply had Derek wondering if someone needed his strength, his help. Needed him, perhaps.

It’s been four days since he felt anything at all.

* * *

He returns to the loft since it’s still in his name. His key to the front door was lost months ago, but he slips in without a prying eye calling the police on an intruder and finds the spare key in a drawer. It’s plainer than he remembers. He could’ve sworn a certain someone had slipped this copy onto a vibrantly colored key fob. He stares at the difference between what’s before him and what his mind recalls. Maybe he’s mistaken. He replaces the key in the drawer, not wanting to go back out so soon of breaking in. Beacon Hills looks the same, but feels different. Quieter. Shackled. Life is missing from the town fabric; he can feel it. The town’s bouquet is muted and stripped. He’s gotten a few whiffs of the familiar pack, but not enough to make him comfortable. Like a familiar recipe made without an expected ingredient. Garlic, or something.

Derek instead opens windows and shakes the dust from what little furniture he deigned good enough to place in the industrial-style suite. There is still a sofa bathed in grim sunlight from the dirty floor-to-ceiling windows. Up the spiral staircase is still the two bedrooms. He walks into the room he called his, only after the wolves started coming over more and more to plot out missions and ask him to help in whatever scuffle Scott had found himself in, _themselves_ in. The second bedroom has seen a few guests: Peter, mostly, and Cora for that short time. He checks on that room and sees that it’s the same from what he can remember. He doesn’t sense anything nefarious. He didn’t spend any time in there anyways. He traipses back to his own room, mulls over the phrase _his room_ and wonders if this place has ever felt like his and not just a room to pass necessary time. And then he remembers something: the one time he’d caught Stiles napping upstairs instead of hyped up about something diabolical in their lives or something diabolical he’d learned from wikipedia. He hadn’t known the kid could be so quiet. He didn’t know Stiles slept, to be honest; another thing Derek had failed to notice in the hardening of all of their lives. Derek had finally outgrown his family grief. Scott had finally grown into an alpha. Stiles had grown into what he had always been: the beacon of hope, of solidness. He was the person who stood beside you with a baseball bat rearing to go before you even knew the shit was about to hit the fan. On the staircase landing, Derek remembers spying a Stiles who had earned his slumber, quietly passed out in bed upstairs. He remembers tamping down on the strange surge of emotion when he acknowledged Stiles had not crawled into the clearly made up and available guest bedroom, but Derek’s own instead.

The bed is empty and barely made now.

Derek opens a dresser drawer to stave off the impending loneliness. He didn’t ask for this. Didn’t ask for inexperienced wolf pups to come crawling to him for help, when he was nothing more than barely an adult saddled with more responsibilities than he should’ve been burdened with. He didn’t ask for them to crawl under his skin and settle. And during that time of settling, he had lost the alpha name, a name his family had carried for generations. He had gained a sister once believed lost, only to lose her again to this other life she had built for herself. And then Kate returned and she…he…

He left.

He had needed time away to heal, to grieve, to turn over the territory that was his to new owners. He wanted to let Scott really be the alpha. The Hale name was land and cash rich, but title poor and Derek needed to bury not only his family but his family’s legacy. He didn’t know how to move on. He’d leant his help. He'd stayed away. He’d parted ways amicably with Braeden because she’s a real person and no secret monstrous agenda. That had been a relief, and had felt like a personal win for Derek. And now he stands back in Beacon Hills to, what? Lead? Offer support? He decides to continue checking his surroundings for now.

The dresser still has a few shirts, jeans, and some straggling socks and boxer briefs to get him through before having to do laundry immediately despite the musty smell permeating the fabric. He was sure he’d left more clothes behind than this. Someone must’ve been pilfering his laundry in the meantime. He opens the window in the bedroom too, then grabs a fistful of the duvet on the bed and gives a great shake. Dust motes spiral loftily in the strobe of golden sunshine through the window slats. He moves on.

* * *

  
  


Scott finds him that evening.

Scott smells of hope and confusion, of Malia and Lydia and other barely familiar scents.

He smells wrong.

“Derek! You’re here!”

His words are all friendliness and acceptance, as if no time has passed between them. Scott pulls Derek in for a hug, surprising him, but the familiarity is nice.

“God, man, I haven’t seen you since Mexico! I’m so glad you’re okay! You saved my life, you know. When you told Braeden to go find me. That was, wow. I’ve been wanting to say thank you for a while now.”

Derek doesn’t understand, but he smiles at Scott’s enthusiasm and shakes his head. “Scott. It’s fine. The understanding is that when life is on the line, we take care of each other.”

“I know. But still. Thank you. You’ve saved my life a lot over the years.”

Derek folds his arms over his chest, thinking there’s a middle man missing from this conversation whom deserves most of the credit. The lack of scent and the conversation brew suspicions in his mind. Braeden came for _him_ , not for Scott. Braeden came when Derek sent away the one person caught in the middle, the one person who would turn back to ask if Derek was okay.

“Scott, what do you mean I sent Braeden to help you?”

“Did you not? Cause she did. Just take the thanks, man.”

“Scott,” Derek says, with every force he can muster to hold every ounce of Scott’s attention. “Where’s Stiles?”

And Derek’s whole world crumbles when Scott cocks his head in a quizzical manner and says, “Who?”

* * *

He patches himself back together quickly, efficiently. What he wants to say, yell, is _What the fuck is going on? Why does everything feel wrong?_ But instead he settles for something more subdued.

“Stiles,” Derek repeats from only a few seconds ago, but it comes out as a growl. “Where. Is. Stiles.”

“Dude, are you feeling okay? Is this another secret family member I don’t know about?”

Derek wants to lash out at that. A lost family member. That’s an apt description, but he’s still not convinced Scott isn’t just taking the piss out of him. He clenches his fists instead, tucked close to his side like a mockery of comfort. There’s no lie in Scott’s voice, in his heart.

“Your best friend, Scott,” he grits out. “Where is he?”

“Liam? He’s got homework.”

“This isn’t funny, Scott. Focus! Stiles!”

“I don’t know what you’re on about, Derek! You show up out of nowhere! We’re in the middle of dealing with maybe a crisis, maybe, we’re not sure, and you’re asking about...walls? Stone walls? What the hell is a stiles again?”

“God damnit! Stiles Stilinski! The goofball in the red hoodie who’s saved our asses more than I can count! Where is he?!”

Scott stands there, shocked into silence. Derek knows he’s lost his temper before. He’s yelled, he’s threatened, he’s slammed most of them into a few walls for good measure. But Scott looks at him for the first time like maybe Derek is actually insane.

“ _Sheriff_ Stilinski,” Scott begins carefully, “is probably on duty. I don’t know his schedule. We haven’t had reason to call him in for supernatural stuff in a while. But we’ve got some disappearances—or something—and we might need to take our concerns up with him.”

Derek stares at the floor, disbelief thrumming through his veins. “I’m asking about Stiles, Scott.” His voice is low, dangerous. He looks back to Scott’s face and asks, “Where is the sheriff’s son?”

Scott’s face begins to twist, his first sign of anger. “The sheriff doesn’t have a son. Everyone knows this.” He shakes his head in frustration. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Derek. I don’t know why you’re here. But we could use your help. A kid and his parents disappeared on us. We think something took them. You in?”

Derek gives himself a moment, then lets out a long exhale. “Yeah, I’ll help,” he promises.

It’s what he does in the end, always.

* * *

After Scott leaves, Derek’s mind doesn’t let go of what happened. His brain churns a single word over and over like an engine that won’t start. A name. _Stiles._ When night falls, Derek avoids the pack and runs a tight perimeter check of all he holds dear. It’s mostly just the Preserve plus the Stilinski and McCall households. He jogs into the Stilinski’s neighborhood, silently and keeping to the shadows, not wanting to tip anyone off to what he’s doing. There’s a light on in the living room downstairs, but the cruiser’s spot in the driveway is empty. There’s no Jeep either and Derek knows the Stilinski garage is too full of loved one’s memories for a vehicle to park in.

He checks the side of the house, the part he’s most familiar with: its trellis and eaves perfect for climbing, for landing and pushing open a window.

He turns the corner of the house and stops short. There’s no window.

There’s no goddamn window at all.

How many times has Derek slithered through the top floor opening late at night? How many times has he startled Stiles, always giving Derek a small sense of satisfaction at spooking the guy? How many times has Derek crawled through with the last of his energy, only for Stiles to come running and patch him up?

There’s no window.

Derek stands there, looking at the uninterrupted siding, at how the house appears shifted, like a Rubik's cube twisted wrong after completion. He wants to barrel inside the house and investigate; there’s a light on but no cruiser. He listens and scents the air: a body moving inside, humming, moving from room to room and back again with the confidence of someone managing their own domain. The shifting of the feet, the pace, the energy, the voice and the _goddamn smell_ are all wrong.

Derek doesn’t know who this person is.

He pulls out his phone once he gets back to the tree line of a sparse copse behind the Stilinski property and selects a contact. Scott picks up on the third ring.

“You said something about missing people?” Derek asks without preamble.

“Yeah. You gonna help?”

“I think your list of missing persons is longer than you think,” is all Derek allows himself to say before he hangs up. He pockets his phone and leaves the broken familiarity of the Stilinski house to make for shelter. Back at the loft he can figure out how to not feel whatever emotion is welling up inside of him at the knowledge that the person he connects with best has been forgotten from collective memory. Back at the loft he can attempt to figure out his next move. Derek runs into the woods.

And yet, back at the Stilinski household, inside where Derek cannot see, a crack appears through the wall-papered wall of the upstairs hallway.

* * *

Derek showers after letting the taps run their rust out and puts on his nicest Henley leftover in his dresser. He’s going to visit the sheriff after all.

He takes deep breaths—in through the nose, out through the mouth—to calm himself. How does one present themselves to the town sheriff, the pack father figure, owner of said window Derek’s broken through so many times to capture the attention of the man’s son, to say, _hey, I think your son disappeared and no one seems to be concerned._

He needs to play this cool, to separate himself from the emotions brewing inside, emotions that are forming an accusatory narrative against himself to say _how could this happen again? How could you lose another person you keep close?_

He pushes the stifling thoughts back down to the rage of his belly.

The walk to the sheriff’s department takes all of fifteen minutes and Derek still doesn’t know how he’s going to handle this. The darkness of night surrounds him and the street lamps of the downtown grid glow orange and atmospheric. He walks through the double glass doors of the department building, feeling suddenly exposed and like a criminal willfully turning himself in instead of hightailing it for asylum. He sets his jaw, narrows his eyes, and makes his way through the labyrinth of stations to the depths where the sheriff sits.

A few people stop him and ask what he’s doing. He points to the window Stilinski sits behind, saying he’s got information the sheriff wants. The man must’ve become a lot more transparent in his dealings with particular civilians because the two uniformed officers who stop him along the journey both let him pass. The door to the man’s office is wide open, but Derek raps a knuckle against the doorframe anyways to get the man’s attention. The sheriff’s eyes widen at Derek’s appearance and he waves him inside with a friendly gesture. Derek steps through the door and, knowing there’s no going back now, closes the door behind him. It’s just him and a soon to be grieving father if the man’s face is anything to go by. There’s the usual slight frown of worry, the one that says he’s sheriff of a place like Beacon Hills. But there’s no panic. There’s no shutdown. There’s nothing to suggest the sheriff has lost something so precious to him. Nothing like what Derek is beginning to feel inside.

“Hale,” the sheriff nods in greeting. “Should I be happy to see you? Or do I need to stock up on weapons?”

He knows the sheriff’s made a joke, knows that after all the shit they’ve been through he’s being familiar with him. But Derek can’t wipe the grim stoicness off his face as he says, “Hey, sheriff. I thought I’d help Scott with the missing persons case.”

“Hmm well last I checked it was just one missing person, some kid, and this is according to Scott and maybe...Liam?” He squints his question out with his full face, like he’s not sure of the name or of Liam in general.

“Yeah, I don’t have all the details yet. Scott mentioned parents too, made it sound like maybe there were more, but I haven’t spoken with the pack researcher yet.”

“Oh, right, the infamous Miss Martin. Often she pops around when she wants something, not the other way around.”

“Lydia,” is all Derek says to that and the sheriff nods, his gaze turning into a scrutiny of Derek before him as if he’s unsure why he’s so slow on the uptick. Derek switches gears. “How have you been, sheriff? And…”

“Me and the Missus have been good, just doing the same old things. Her garden came in strong this year only to be eaten by rats. The bastards.”

“Oh.” And then, “The missus?”

The sheriff wears a slight look of incredulity. “As in my wife, Hale. Claudia.”

“Your wife,” Derek says slowly, the words like molasses over his tongue. “Right.”

“Did you forget I was married?”

“Umm, something like that.” 

_What the hell?_

“That’s what happens when you’re gone so long and don’t keep up with the locals. You can’t live your life hopping from one supernatural disaster to the next, you know.”

“That’s...that’s good advice, Sir. Maybe I’ll take you up on it.”

“I’m sure you will. Right after whatever it truly is Scott’s roped you into, huh?” The sheriff gives Derek a knowing smile.

Derek raises his hands. “Caught me.”

“Tell you what,” Stilinski says. “Come over for dinner tomorrow. Show Claudia how big and strong you’ve gotten.” He gives him a wink. “She always loved to see you and your siblings out wreaking havoc when you were still little. I think she would’ve mothered you if she could.”

Derek senses a dull, aged ache with the statement. An old hurt mostly healed and accepted, but still there to cause some regret.

“C’mon,” the sheriff continues. “The weather’s turning cold. Let us make you a casserole. It’ll be nice to be a party of three for a change.”

Derek doesn’t understand what he’s agreeing to; the whole situation has him topsy-turvy. But he says nonetheless, “That sounds great, Sir. Let me know if I can bring something.”

The sheriff claps him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, Derek. And no, don’t bring anything or else Claudia won’t feel like she’s taking care of our guest, okay? We got it.” He takes a step back and looks Derek square in the face. “Anything else?”

There are so many answers to that question. “No, just checking on you. Letting you know I’m back in town.”

“Wow. Loquacious of you.” The sheriff smiles. It’s such a Stiles turn of phrase, a Stiles type of jest, and the emotions balloon inside of him again, pressing uncomfortably everywhere and threatening to spill out. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to fix this. He feels lost and the person who grounds him is gone.

Oh god.

The person _who grounds him._

Shit. _Shit._ His anchor. His anchor is gone.

He doesn’t have time for this, for any kind of personal analysis. All of this only shows how messed up he is, that the only stable thing in his life is a smart-mouthed kid who had the minimum amount of decency to make sure that Derek Hale never died on his watch. And sometimes texted him random thoughts when he couldn’t sleep.

“You alright, son?” the sheriff asks. Despite the tact, Derek can feel the concern in his voice.

 _Son._ No, he is not alright. Nothing is right. Stiles is fucking gone somehow.

“Yeah. I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks. I promise I won’t bring anything.”

The sheriff smiles. “Good. Leave the door open on your way out, kid.”

Derek is twenty-five. He hasn’t considered himself a kid since the fire. But for the first time, Derek feels the full weight of his lack of experience. Stiles is lost. And he feels lost, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I split the difference between the canon ages given by crew and cast and made Derek 25 and Stiles is 19 (I believe the Wild Hunt story line ends right before the last day of school??). Stiles' age for this fic is elaborated on in the final chapter, and hinted at in chapter 2.


	2. Positions

He sleeps fitfully. 

Derek strips to his boxer briefs and lays down, curling up beneath the old sheet and blanket. It is unseasonably cold and he lays there for an hour before he decides to get up and do some pushups.

He repeats this several more times before falling into an uneasy slumber, interrupted by an unexpected storm that rolls in to disturb his pitiful rest with lightning and thunder. The strikes seem close but he’s too tired from traveling, too exhausted from whatever ordeal he’s found himself in to care enough to wake up fully. But the thunder permeates enough of his fugue state to leave him with a bitter taste in his mouth, with the idea that preternatural evil haunts the town. When he finally does wake up completely, the sunlight streams through the naked windows of his ill-kept bedroom with no trace of the night’s storm. Derek half wonders if he imagined it and mentally chastises himself for allowing a storm to shake him. He pushes himself up and out, then slips on the clothes he changed into yesterday. He has errands to run, information to find, and no time to worry over the weather. There’s the half-finished tube of toothpaste in his bathroom vanity he used last night and he brushes his teeth before winding his way down the spiral staircase.

The clock on the oven range reads a meager 06:35.

It’s another school day; he cannot talk with Scott or the other pack members. So Derek takes the time to think, musing in his empty kitchen, about what to do next. Groceries, for sure. He thinks of Chris Argent who still comes to visit Beacon Hills. He could seek him out. He doesn’t want to seek him out. Not with what happened the last time he had a run in with the Argent family.

That left…

Deaton.

He’ll get some coffee first. And then he’ll pay Alan Deaton, Vet Med, a visit.

* * *

Deaton’s words convey surprise at seeing Derek back in town, but his tone does not. He does not even bother to look up from the filing cabinet he is digging through in the back office of his veterinarian clinic. The good doctor gets straight to business.

“Derek. What is the purpose of this early morning visit?”

Derek had stopped by the Roasting Company for a latte, had forced himself to slowly nurse said latte inside the establishment—at the far table by the stairs and enormous canvas bags of whole coffee beans, rife with fresh coffee smell—and still made it to Deaton’s only a couple minutes past eight a.m.

“I…”

He trails off, unsure of how to begin, how to play this. Does he investigate quietly? Methodically? With leading questions? Or does he get straight to the point and try to startle the truth from the stone-faced veterinarian? Lash out with an accusation and hope for a tell-tale heart rate. 

He gets straight to the point. “It’s Stiles. He’s missing.”

Deaton continues to sort through files. “And Stiles is a pet, then? I’m surprised to be used for my actual clinical skills.”

Derek simply closes his eyes. _I’m not the pack’s pet!_ wafts through his mind in Stiles’ voice, his indignation clear and present despite the contrary.

“You don’t remember him either.”

Deaton stops filing to scrutinize the werewolf in his office. “I can’t say that I do,” he says, taking in the slight slump to Derek’s shoulders, the downward pull of the young man’s mouth. Derek watches himself be assessed. He’s been assessed many times in his still-brief life. He knows he's always found wanting.

Derek starts the conversation again. “Stiles. He— he could use the mountain ash.”

“Another mountain ash user? This Stiles was magic?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t actually know. I think he just had an active imagination to be honest.”

Deaton gives a small laugh at that. “Yes, an active imagination can certainly help. And you said this person is missing?”

“Yes. He’s Scott’s best friend, but Scott doesn’t remember him. They’re in school together, same age. Well, same grade anyways. The sheriff doesn’t remember him either.”  
  
“Sheriff Stilinski?”

“Yeah, Stiles’ dad. It’s where the ‘Stiles’ comes from.”

“Sheriff Stilinski and his wife do not have any children, Derek.”

“Yeah, I got the gist of that last night when I talked to him. But last time I checked, Claudia Stilinski was dead. Had been for years. And the Stilinski house was just the sheriff and Stiles.” 

He pauses, thinks. None of this makes sense. Derek is a born werewolf. He’s fought witches and spirits and other weres. But he’s never met anything that could rewrite time itself. Nothing that could unmake a person and cover it up. It’s not possible. It shouldn’t be possible. 

Derek says slowly, “When I first met Scott McCall, I also met Stiles. They were inseparable. Scott only got bitten because Stiles led him out to the Preserve that night. He’d heard on _his father’s police scanner_ about Laura’s dead body in the woods.”

His voice has gotten loud in the end and his chest heaves with exertion. He has strained himself emotionally. Deaton continues to take in his countenance; still assessing.

“I’ll see what I can find on this,” the vet eventually says, his tone cautiously even. He’s treating Derek with kid gloves. And then, “I’m sorry about this Stiles. He sounds like someone we could use in this town.”

A small huff of laughter escapes from him, because, god damn isn’t that the truth. “Yeah. We’re screwed without him. The town’s fate rests in the hands of an ADHD high school senior and he doesn’t even exist anymore.”

“Hmm. Well then. I’ve got appointments starting in,” he checks the clock on the wall, “forty-five minutes. I’ll check with some contacts when I have a spare moment.”

“Text me if you find anything.”

“Of course. I’m sure I’ll hear from you if I do not provide information soon enough to your liking.”

Derek doesn’t say anything to that. He lets his fading footfalls and the chime of the door as he exits the building have the last say.

* * *

He makes his way to the grocery store after his visit with Deaton.

It’s a small, family-owned market that used to have three store locations throughout the valley and now only has one. This last location has survived the big box stores apparently because the owners still love what they do and because the people of town bizarrely enjoy the store-made spinach dip. He wonders now about how the market is doing and figures their budget to be dismal; the store is mostly empty save for him. He’s seen a grand total of one other shopper as he makes his way around the store’s perimeter, assessing what he needs on the spot. It could simply be the hour—it’s not yet nine in the morning. Derek instead focuses on the silver lining that there’s no risk of accidentally buying double of something; the loft is devoid of all sustenance.

The cart he pushes around slowly fills up: milk, cereal, eggs, sliced sourdough, ground coffee, salted butter. He gets the deli to slice up a pound of turkey and some local jack cheese. He plucks the least blemished apples from their slightly rotting bushel and finds a netted bag of tangerines in the produce section. He throws in a bag of carrots for good measure and scowls when he imagines a snarky comment from Stiles over the carrots. He’s sure it involves rabbits somehow. He bags up some loose baby spinach, trying to select the least limp leafy greens to keep the carrots company. He doesn’t need much since he agreed to dinner with the sheriff.

And the sheriff's wife.

Derek decides he’s filled up the cart enough, any more food and it will probably spoil uneaten. Most of the store seems to be in a state of half rot anyways. He makes the bare amount of acceptable small talk with the only checker working despite six other lanes to accommodate the nonexistent patrons and pays for the food. He gets a discount after he plugs in his mom’s old cell phone number that is still associated with a rewards program. He can’t believe he still remembers her number. He can’t believe that it still means something.

* * *

Dinner that night is an awkward affair.

Derek had showered again—quickly—letting the hot water sting at him in order to feel something different, something other than confusion and loss. All he felt was grateful he had forgotten to cancel his city utilities and PG&E service to allow himself this small luxury. Then he had mentally tabulated what services needed cancelled or renewed, depending on if he stayed in town. He wasn’t convinced he had a future here. Only a wrong to right. Simple as that. Nothing further. Certainly no need for gas and electric services when he leaves again.

The laundry situation was still abysmal when he got out of the shower, but he found clean underclothes, another clean pair of dark wash jeans, and a soft green t-shirt. His dark shirts are all gone, he discovered his first day back, all of the tighter fitting ones. He still had his familiar boots—boots that have helped him fight, helped him flee, the leather turned supple in their use—and a gray well-loved utility jacket. He had swept some styling cream through his hair and called himself presentable. Then he’d locked up with the unadorned key from the kitchen drawer, still missing the multicolor key fob.

Now, at the sheriff’s house, he begins to panic.

“Come on in, son,” the sheriff had said to him when Derek knocked on the door.

He knows this house so intimately well—has found himself within its walls too many times to dig through medicine cabinets for bandages and isopropyl, or slipping inside for information or safety—yet he has never been formally invited inside. Not until now.

And the differences from all of those stolen moments in the house to what sits before him…the differences are startling.

The old, dated drapes are newer, modern, with less dust and no sun fade. In the corner by the front window, the sheriff’s favorite chair has been reupholstered with a blanket folded artfully over the arm. The space is cheery and vulnerable.

There is no hint of Stiles.

There is no collection of sweatshirts draped across various furniture surfaces. No lacrosse sticks abandoned in haste for something else, like a bleeding friend or a dinner burning. Instead, Derek stands in the middle of a comfortable living room, the sheriff leading him further into the depths of the warm home towards the smell of home cooking.

“Come say hi to Claudia, she’s just now pulling the casserole out. A mixed greens salad okay on the side?”

Derek runs the question back in his head, he’s so caught off guard. “Uh, yeah, that’s fine. I eat anything, sir, you know that.”

“No need for this ‘sir’ stuff. Call me Noah.”

Derek wants to sit down. Or crouch and place his head between his knees, to gasp for air. He’s not sure if he can handle calling the man who’s arrested him, threatened him, and glared at him for all the danger he got his son into _Noah_.

“Clauds!” The sheriff calls out. “Derek’s here!”

Derek hears an “I know!” from below the kitchen island butcher block top. “I heard the knock!” The words and her tone are slightly mocking, but mostly fond exasperation seeps from her voice before she pops up triumphantly with a white ceramic dish clutched between her mittened hands.

“Hey there, Derek!” she says after she shakes a loose strand of hair out of her face, the steam and heat from the dish and the oven making the hair cling stubbornly to her face. “Haven’t seen you in a while!” She says all of this like she knows him. Like she’s known him for years instead of being dead this whole time. Derek doesn’t recall ever seeing her before. 

But instead he says, “Hi, Mrs. Stilinski. Thanks for having me to dinner.”

“Pssh it’s no problem. I wanted some hot comfort food, but the leftovers would last Noah and me for a week. You’re doing us a favor.” She gives him a smile and an exaggerated wink. Derek kinda loves her already. She has a happy face full of expression, with crinkle lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. She’s seen so much more of life in whatever the hell this scenario is. He remembers wanting this for himself, to see exactly this: a mother who had aged, who was still with him, full of life and comforts. He remembers Stiles, who very pointedly did not talk about his mother, tell Derek about her one day at the Preserve, when no one else was there and Derek stood before the burnt out husk of a family home. Derek remembers treating Stiles with silence even though inside he knew the gift Stiles was giving him: the gift of trust, of solidarity. He had given Stiles a quiet _thank you_ at the time. He wishes now he could have given him more. But he’s several years too late now.

He’s always too many years too late to where he ought to be it seems.

“Glad I can help, Mrs. Stilinski.” He finds that he means it.

“Why, what fine manners you have there, Mr. Hale,” Claudia says with a laugh. “Come help me set the table.”

“She means it, kid,” the sheriff says. “Guest rights mean nothing in this household.”

She teases her husband, “Noah, you just make the salad.”

Derek stands off to the side while Claudia pulls out a trio of plates from an upper cabinet in the kitchen and then forks and knives from a drawer at her hip.

“Place these anywhere, really. It’s a four-person table. We don’t care.”

Derek gives a gruff, “Sure,” and relieves her of the plates, the cutlery scraping across the surface of the patterned china. It’s the same bone white with pale blue flower petals he’s seen set off to the side of Stiles’ desk sometimes. He sets out three places, arranging the forks and knives on either side. Then he makes the short walk back to the kitchen and waits for further instructions.

“Oh!” Claudia says. “Napkins, I guess. We can make tonight a little fancy. As a treat.”

Noah mumbles something about having to find more stuff as he tears washed greens into a salad bowl.

“What?” his wife asks.

“There’s napkins in the sideboard.” The sheriff opens up an avocado, then whacks the pit with a knife blade once where it sticks, then twists the blade to remove the pit from the flesh. He slices down, and then across, and spoons the chunks out and adds it to the greens. 

“Oh, right. Derek, over there, grab some napkins and put them on the table, thanks.”

Derek follows the vague gesture of her hand to the sideboard and grabs a few cloth napkins. Claudia follows him over with the casserole and trivet. 

“Go ahead and have a seat. Noah, bring the salad.”

“I’ve still got the spicy pecans to put in here.”

Claudia catches Derek’s eye and rolls her own eyes. “Well then I guess the pecans didn’t make the cut.”

“What?” comes from the kitchen and then, “Oh. Ha ha. I’m coming, just hold your horses.” The sheriff sets the bowl on the table and gives it a cursory toss with the salad tongs, a stray mandarin wedge escaping with a plop onto the table surface. “All right, serve up. Go ahead, Derek.”

Derek scoops some mixture of wild rice, turkey, green beans and cream sauce onto his plate before grabbing a heap of salad. He sits down, and waits for his hosts to join him in filling their plates. He feels like he’s lost in the Twilight Zone. The house is still bereft of grief, of loss, but of a different kind. The troubles this town has placed on the sheriff’s shoulders have still seeped into this cozy home. But at the crux of things remains the lack of Stiles. He wants to shout—wants to run, dig, search—yet Derek has no idea how to broach the subject. Stiles is missing. The world is wrong. The people in Beacon Hills who have forgotten Stiles and insist there never was a Stiles are wrong.

And yet.

Claudia Stilinski is alive.

Derek takes a bite of the casserole she made. It’s still steaming hot, but his werewolf healing keeps him from burning the roof of his mouth. He mulls over the food, his thoughts. He blows a bit of air on the next forkful. He realizes it’s like a clean switch has been made. Stiles for Claudia. One once dead, but now alive…

“This is very good, Mrs. Stilinski.” He cannot entertain the thought of Stiles being...beyond missing.

“Oh, thanks, Derek. And I’m so glad you could make it. Noah says you’ve been out of the country this last year.”

Derek nods around a forkful of food. “Yeah, I needed out of here for a bit. Take some time to figure things out. Change of scenery. That sort of thing.”

“We sure missed your tips down at the station,” the sheriff says with a pointed look.

“It looked like others had it covered,” is all Derek can manage.

“And I doubt you’ve kept up with local sports.”

“Was there anything to keep up on?”

The sheriff shrugs. “Not really. The Giants couldn’t keep up their even year World Series streak.”

“I couldn’t keep up with it either, what with all the town...vibrancy,” Derek hedges.

“Right, right. Hmm, well the A’s still have the longest win streak in baseball. The new stadium for the Niners is a nightmare. The Raiders are still the Raiders, though there’s talk of them moving to Vegas.”

“Oh, Noah, stop being ridiculous.” Claudia reaches across the table and clasps Derek’s hand. “None of that matters. The important thing is, _where did you go?_ ” She perches her chin on her hand, eyes wide in expectation. Derek finds he cannot deny her.

Derek wows Claudia—and Noah—with tales of Central America, of Southeast Asia, of Oceania. She laughs at his stories, at his antics; the misunderstandings and the lessons learned the hard way. She fires off questions, pressing for more information. It feels weird to be questioned; not because he’s being grilled, but because someone is actually interested in what he does in his spare time. The only other person who asked personal questions unabashedly was, of course, Stiles.

“And then you came back.” Claudia says. This one is not a question. He nods.

“And then I came back.”

“When did you know it was time to come back? How did you know?”

“I realized I was missing something. Or someone. A friend. An understanding.”

The sheriff peers at him, disbelief riddling his face. “Don’t tell me you were missing _Scott.”_

Derek can’t help it. He laughs.

The sheriff continues. “I mean, I know the goofball’s got a heart of gold, but do you realize how hopeless he is without you? He’s trying to mentor that Dunbar kid all the while the normalcy of Beacon Hills’ weirdness continues. He’s got no traditions to fall back on, no history. He can only _wing it_ so many times until the inevitable wrong happens. I’m sorry you had to cut your vacation short—god knows you deserve it and I’d love to see all you youths get out one day—but we need you here, son. At least for a little bit more.”

The table has gone serious; serious in a way that he suspects Claudia must know the wide array of investigations her husband makes.

“Help yourself to more food, Derek,” she says in a calm, warm voice.

He does, but he stops halfway through.

“I didn’t come back for Scott. But I can help him all the same.”

“Who’d you come back for?”

“Someone else. But he’s not here.”

“A pack member?”

Derek doesn’t need to think or debate or analyze his answer. He immediately says, “Yes.”

“Were you hoping he’d have some answers or something?”

“I was hoping he would be okay.”

“Derek, what the hell have you got us into?”

It is _always_ Stiles who ropes them into difficult situations. But with him gone, Derek supposes he makes a fine substitute in a pinch. “It wasn’t me this time, sheriff. I promise. But I think he’s part of Scott’s missing case.”

“He’s missing? Who’s missing?”

At that, Derek hesitates. “You don’t remember him,” is what he finally answers. “No one remembers him except for me.”

Noah looks at Derek a little funny, like maybe Derek has finally snapped. After the years of death and betrayal, Derek can’t fault the man. Claudia just looks at him with sympathy.

“I’m sorry,” Derek says. “I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know how to tell you any of this yet. I don’t...I don’t think you’ll take it well.” He says it to the sheriff only, deliberately avoiding Claudia. Avoiding the blush on her face still leftover from the warm laughter of five minutes ago. Avoiding how very much _alive_ she is when he knows Stiles has spent years grieving and hurting and blaming himself for her death. Everything is beyond wrong. Stiles isn’t here, his own parents don’t seem to know they have a son, and an alive Claudia Stilinski is serving Derek a home cooked meal. She had lovingly ordered him about like her own child.

“Thank you so much for dinner. It really was delicious,” he finally says to her.

Derek wants to punish himself. At enjoying something he knows Stiles would sacrifice anything just to experience again. Derek should let Stiles tear him to shreds for stealing this moment.

Once he finds him.

He must find Stiles first. And then ask for forgiveness.

* * *

Dinner fizzles out quietly after that.

Derek apologizes, offers to clean up, and then leaves; making the long walk back to his loft slow and deliberate. He needs to talk to Scott. He needs more information. He needs Stiles back, needs to know he’s okay. He needs to put things right.

Shit. Claudia.

Whatever took Stiles, must have substituted him with his mother. Is she even really alive? What force in this universe could make a swap like that? And if they had that much power, why _the fuck_ would they use it on Beacon Hills of all places?

He’s halfway to the loft when a rumble of thunder interrupts his thoughts, followed by a flash in the distance. He must have missed the first flash. He must have been completely wrapped up in his thoughts. He times this strike though, like he did so many times as a kid, when he would stare out from his second story window in the middle of the night, curtains pushed open in excitement.

_One. Two. BOOM._

It’s far enough away to not be a problem, then. He keeps walking as dark swirling clouds move in at a high speed, bringing with them a steady rain. He doesn’t remember seeing rain in the forecast. And he finds it suspicious that two separate storms would roll in and out of _a valley._ He speeds up his walk, his thoughts getting jumbled with weather patterns and lightning strikes, instead of the plan he was trying to come up with. For getting Scott to be more forthcoming with information. For finding Stiles, definitively. For figuring out what to do with Claudia Stilinski. And for somehow staying a little bit in this town that no one seems to be able to leave, just to make sure Stiles is okay. Because when Stiles finds out about his mom, he is not going to be okay. Derek prepares himself for Stiles’ wrath.

He makes it to the loft, shedding raindrops, a soaked jacket, and his tangle of thoughts. He feels safe out of the storm, but burdened with what’s to come.


	3. Acceleration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the pack starts to get some answers and we continue to live in Derek's head, which is only fair cause he lives rent free in my mind, hmmm...

He doesn’t manhandle him. He doesn’t use violence or threats. But Derek grills Scott the next day on everything he didn’t know before.

“Tell me about these missing cases. Now.”

Scott shrugs his words off. “Hi Derek, great to see you too. I see you’ve found me at my afterschool job to catch up since you’ve been away for so long.”

“Stop being a smartass, it doesn’t suit you.”

Scott makes a face. “There’s no monopoly on sarcasm, dude.”

“Answers. Right now.”

“Okay, but you gotta understand. You keep saying missing cases. But it’s not as simple as that. They’re disappearing at random. And it’s only a few.”

“That you know of.”

“Yeah, okay, true, but we’ve found items of theirs left behind. So we know where to start looking. That’s all the evidence we have right now.”

“You’re wrong. I’m your evidence of another missing person.”

“Oh, right, the sheriff’s kid who never existed, according to you.”

“He fits the MO, doesn’t he?”

Scott tilts his head and gives it a scratch. “Well, I mean, you’re not wrong. But how could we just _forget_ someone like that? We work with the sheriff. Often. He hasn’t reported anyone missing. And the whole town knows he and his wife can’t have kids.”

“He wasn’t just the sheriff’s kid, Scott. He was your best friend. Going way back. All the sleepovers, all the late nights researching werewolf stuff. I stepped in fairly quickly, but for a while it was just you and him trying to figure out what your bite meant.”

“But,” Scott sputters, “that’s not how it happened. How could I forget someone who was my best friend, Derek? That’s not something that can happen! This doesn’t make sense!”

“He was with you, in the woods, when Peter bit you. Don’t you remember? You and Stiles went back for your inhaler. You two met me and I threw it back to you.”

“No, no I was alone. Alone and scared! There was no one!”

“He had me arrested, you know,” but his voice is one part annoyed, one part impressed, and a fond smile appears only in the corner of Derek’s mouth. “How’d the department know to come to my house so soon? The sheriff’s son has connections. Had connections, I guess,” he muses, lost in thought.

Scott’s stopped listening. He’s holding his hands over his ears, like he’s trying to drown out some loud shriek. Derek catches him at the elbows to steady him.

“Scott? Scott! What’s wrong?”

“My head!” he forces out. “It hurts, it hurts so much. Derek, what the hell?? That’s not how it happened! There was no one with me, no friend, just you! And who the hell is Peter?!” Scott slumps forward, and Derek lets him brace himself on a countertop in the vet’s office. He’s breathing heavily and there’s a sheen of sweat across his brow. But he’s got more questions to ask.

“What do you mean, ‘who the hell is Peter’? Peter. My uncle, who bit you.”

“Your whole family’s dead, Derek,” Scott says through ragged breaths. “There’s no one, except for Cora. And you.”

_Oh god. Peter. Is he missing too? Can’t say it’s not what he deserves._

Scott is panting in a worrying pattern.

“Scott, just breathe, okay? C’mon, you can do it.”

“Derek.” He takes a breath and Derek waits. “I think you’re right. I think, maybe, you’re right.”

“Do you remember him? Do you remember Stiles? Dark hair, brown eyes, moles, constant smirk on his face? Or Peter then?”

Scott looks at Derek funny at that. “No, dude. Sorry, I don’t remember him. Either of them.”

Derek sighs. Typical Scott.

“But,” Scott says. “I can’t stop thinking about something...and thinking that it’s his. Your missing person. This best friend of mine, so you say.”

“What is it?”

“Derek. There was a noise at school, over the PA system. And it led me to a baby blue Jeep that I think I’ve spent a lot of time in.”

“Stiles. That’s his Jeep. At the school?”

Scott nods. “I saw it in the parking lot. It’s been there for a while by the looks of it. But I didn’t even notice it until today. This afternoon actually, while I was thinking about the missing kid and then what you had mentioned about the sheriff and his wife. It was just, _there_.”

“We have to get him back. We can’t do any of this without him.”

“Are you serious? We’ve been fine…”

“No. We always had him. We can’t figure this stuff out if we don’t have Stiles. I’m serious; now is not the time for egos. We need him.”

“Okay. How about I meet you at the school in a few hours. We can’t be seen loitering until after five. And we should wait for dark I think.”

“Sure. Fine. I’ll be there.”

* * *

At the Stilinski house, in the upstairs hallway, the crack parts and extends.

* * *

Derek leaves Scott and the vet clinic to walk around town, trying to determine if more people from his recollection are missing. He makes a list on his phone with intent to quiz Scott on every single one of them when they meet up at the school. He wanders the library, the credit union, a favorite hole-in-the-wall café. He wants to interrogate every person he walks past along the journey. He has to keep himself from disrupting people out at parks or running errands if they’ve seen or heard of Stiles. He knows those actions will only get the sheriff called on him. He settles for just going back to his temporary home, the loft—something purchased in haste and never meant to provide comfort. But when he thinks of the fights, of the research sessions, of Stiles filling the huge empty space with his laughter, his chest tightens when he thinks of this space that offers him asylum. Good and bad welded together.

He makes it up the external stairs to the front door of his loft when he smells her. Subtly fragrant as always; nothing so crass as retail fragrance found in a plastic bottle. No, a bouquet of natural power and couture.

Lydia Martin stands in front of his door, arms crossed over her chest, a look of annoyance on her face.

“About time you got here,” she says to him.

Derek moves to her side to insert the key into his lock. He opens the door widely and then gestures for her to enter. She narrows her eyes at him, but crosses over the threshold anyways.

He closes the door behind him. “Lydia. Nice to see you,” he says dryly.

She skips all pleasantries. “There is _a lot_ more to this than people missing, isn’t there? What do you know, Derek Hale?”

She says his name half as a sneer and half as someone desperate for answers. Derek can’t blame her. An important person from her life is missing and she barely has an inkling to the big picture.

She finishes her questions with an apt, “Why are you suddenly in town now?”

“I’m here because someone’s missing.”

“Someone we know.”

“Yes.”

Her mouth screws up a bit at that and she looks upward, like she can see past the ceiling, past the top floor, past the industrial ducts and roofing materials. Her hands are fists at the sides of her body, the knuckles a bone white in her grip.

Derek realizes belatedly that she’s trying very hard not to cry.

He can hear it now, the trapped sobs in her chest, the raised pulse, the heat of her anger.

“I’ve let someone down.” Her voice is thick and she directs her words to the ethereal realm that only she can see, some place beyond the ceiling where all promises and confessions go. “I think I was supposed to remember someone. They asked me to remember them and I— I didn’t!”

Derek gives her a second to compose herself. Lydia always composes herself, no one does it for her. But when she doesn’t, he says, “You’re not the only one to forget him.”

“Him?” And then, to herself, “I thought so.”

“Lydia, his own father doesn’t know he exists.”

“Seriously?” She snaps her attention to Derek. Her eyes are red and the irises ablaze, reminding him of a forest fire. It’s not a comforting thought. She smoothes her clothes down with the palms of her hands. “That does make me feel better, though. But also sad.”

Derek offers a knowing nod.

“I’ve been looking through recent photos, school assignments, even studying the lunch table we all usually sit at together, of how we arrange ourselves. And someone is missing. I feel it in my heart, but I see it in the empty space left between me and Malia.

“And I’ve been writing a word over and over again without knowing I’m doing it,” Lydia continues. “Kind of like when I would draw the Nemeton. It feels exactly like that. But I don’t understand the context of the word. I don’t know why I would write just one word that has no meaning in my life at all?”

She reaches into her back pocket to pull out a folded piece of lined paper. She opens it up and holds it in front of Derek’s face. Over and over again in blue ball pen ink is the word _Mischief_.

“Is someone up to mischief? I don’t get it! I mean, what is even the point of having supernatural visions and powers if the only thing to come down the pipe is the word ‘Mischief’?”

“Why is the word capitalized?”

“I don’t know. Because it looks better. All first words of sentences are capitalized, Derek, even lame ones.”

Derek huffs his impatience away. “Or maybe it’s a name for a person.”

Lydia looks him dead in the eyes, her shiny red hair perfectly held in loose pleats that drape over a soft shoulder, and says, “Who the fuck would name their kid Mischief?”

Derek cannot prevent the half smile that appears at her query. “I have an idea of who. I’ve never actually learned his first name. Mischief suits him. It’s probably another nickname for a more traditional name. Something that matches the last name maybe.”

“What are you on about?”

“The missing person. We call him Stiles.”

She blinks owlishly. “What’s a Stiles?” she asks, echoing Scott from before. “That’s worse than Mischief.”

At that, a small but full laugh escapes from Derek.

Lydia turns the conversation back to their grim reality. “So what’s the plan, then? How can I help?”

“We don’t have much of a plan. Scott mentioned Stiles’ Jeep being in the school parking lot.”

“Does Scott remember this...Stiles?”

“No.” Derek pauses, thinking. He doesn’t dare be hopeful. And yet, “But I think he’s starting to,” he tells her.

* * *

They wait until dark falls on their small, sleepy city nestled between the valleys and coast of the San Francisco’s North Bay Area. The parking lot is devoid of life, only a glistening sprawl of asphalt beneath the orange glow of the street lamps.

Derek is joined by Scott, Lydia, and Malia; it’s something he appreciates, that it’s the three of them who have come. This is personal. Derek only wants those who knew Stiles best to have a say. Even if they don’t know him at all at this moment.

They begin the walk through the parking lot, Malia asking questions in her usual blunt, tactless way. But her questions reveal more answers: they’re nervous questions and she shifts uncertainly back and forth in her tone. “Has anyone else been feeling edgy lately?” she asks, to which Lydia responds with “When are you not?” but Malia continues anyway. “Why are you guys so boring lately?” she complains and “Life isn’t fun anymore” and also “What’s with the lame missing persons cases? Are we pretending to be CSI? Do we know anyone who even likes those dumb procedural shows? I feel like I knew someone who liked those mundane TV shows. God why am I so restless?”

Derek answers her questions. All of them. Because the answer is the same for each and every one.

“Stiles,” is all he says for a bit. “He used to help you on full moons. You...depended on him for a while. In the beginning. And not for a long time now. But that force of habit, it shaped you. And it’s still there. Like a remnant.”

Lydia slows down her stride to stare at Derek curiously. “A remnant…” she considers. She looks away and follows this vague musing with an, “Oh no.”

All four of them look where Lydia’s gaze has landed, aided by the squeal of brakes from a lit up yellow tow truck. It turns into the far entrance of the same parking lot they’re in where it stops in front of the only car parked here in this lonely place. The baby blue Jeep.

They run towards it.

It’s obvious now that the Jeep’s been abandoned there for a while: the tires sit heavy against the pavement from the slight deflation. Possibly the cooler weather, plus the general neglect for what seems like a month or more of no one driving it. As soon as the tow truck throws the engine in park, Lydia takes charge.

“Are you towing this vehicle? You can’t tow this vehicle.”

A man jumps from the cab. He’s in coveralls and steel-toed work boots. His hair sits flat on top of his head with a line along the sides. Derek assumes he’d been wearing a hat during the daylight before discarding it when the sky turned dark.

He acknowledges Lydia with a head nod. “Ma’am. I’ve got an official request from the school to remove the vehicle. So kindly step aside.”

Lydia positions herself centered with the Jeep, hands on her hips. “No. You’re not taking this one.”

The man scoffs. “Seriously? Is there some weird protest about cars being towed? Don’t you folks have trees to save instead?”

“How much?” Lydia asks.

“Excuse me?”

“How. Much.”

“More than you kids got for the drop fee.”

Lydia gives a slow smile, her eyes narrowed like a cat about to leap on their prey.

“Try me.”

* * *

In the end it takes both Lydia and Derek to cover the bribe against the Jeep being towed.

“Why did I pay so much for this eyesore?” Lydia asks no one in particular. “And why do I feel so attached to it?”

Her second question gets a mumbled consensus of “yeahs” as well as a “you’re not the only one who paid up” from Derek. Half of what he’d shoved in his pocket from his short trip to the credit union is gone, but there is no complaint in his heart. He honestly would’ve spent more if it meant bringing them all one step closer to finding Stiles. He says none of this out loud, leaving only a grim, grumpy expression for the others.

They stare at the Jeep, where it sits silent and unyielding, its secrets kept behind its closed doors and rolled up windows, tinted dark in the night sky.

“So what now?” Scott asks.

* * *

The Jeep is locked.

“I guess I forgot about keys,” Scott says. 

And the _what now?_ of only a moment ago ends up being a debate over how to go about breaking into the vehicle. Stiles would be pissed, Derek realizes. But only after first proposing breaking the window and hot wiring the car. He retracts the suggestion when he considers the year of the vehicle, though. And of Stiles being pissed.

“We can’t just damage and break into this!” Scott, as usual, looks horrified at the thought of operating outside the law. Derek has no such qualms about breaking the law, and the others seem to agree.

“Why not?” Lydia and Malia both ask, for different reasons. Lydia, who probably views the Jeep with a tinge of disdain to her sensibilities, as undrivable since it’s not a luxury vehicle. And Malia, who probably isn’t aware of the social taboo of smashing someone else’s window.

“We have to move it,” Lydia insists. She’s right, but now that they’re about to suggest violence against the beloved vehicle (“Just break a window and move on”), Derek finds himself hesitant to callously treat something so precious to someone he’s beginning to understand is, well, precious to him. Jesus.

Derek says nothing while the others squabble and Lydia takes note of his quiet behavior to address him head on.

“Derek, you know we have to move it. The tow truck will just come back. The Jeep will still just be parked in the school parking lot. Admin will see it. _My mother will see it._ They want it gone. This is our only chance.”

He hears her words, understands what she’s saying. She’s right, of course, though he won’t say that out loud. It’s not really his style and it takes too long. They need to move, they need a solution. Derek stares off in the distance, warring with his feelings: the logic of what needs to happen against the emotional recoil at the thought of damaging this Jeep. Stiles isn’t here to tell them not to touch his baby. Stiles isn’t here, period. This Jeep is all Derek has left of him. He doesn’t want to destroy that.

His eye catches on something left on the pavement a ways out. Maybe 100 feet away, near the border of grass and then the copse of trees beyond that. He leaves the others, his feet taking him to where his gaze has landed, one foot in front of the other until the group behind him becomes distant and background noise. Their voices become less sharp, less at the forefront: 

“Great,” Malia says. “Not that you’re not a fantastic fearless leader Scott, but I was kinda hoping Derek would bring some experience and reinforcement for us. Clearly I was wrong. The guy’s probably walking to his next country to visit.”

“Fine. We can break the window,” Scott says, not addressing Malia’s words. He doesn’t remember Stiles yet. Doesn’t remember the flailed rage Stiles was capable of when someone dissed his very rough-around-the-edges 4x4.

Derek pays them no mind. He’s closer to his target until he stoops over it. A ring of keys lay sprawled on the ground, a glint of moonlight against the asphalt and a familiar green keychain.

 _Gotcha,_ he thinks to himself and picks them up. And then he smells it.

Blood, skin, hair; wet and fresh when it was spilled, but slightly aged and faint now. He smells familiarity. He smells traitorship. He smells... _Peter._

“Malia,” he calls out. From the corner of his eye he sees her turn her head in his direction, then run over. She stands next to him, her head cocked to the side, inquisition on her face. “You smell that?” he asks her.

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, then exhales and opens her eyes back again. “Peter.”

“Scott!” He yells next to test his theory. “When’s the last time you saw Peter?”

And Scott, whose last mention of Peter had been a confused _Who the hell is Peter?,_ says, “Haven’t seen that guy in a while and I like it that way. Wait...”

From much closer, Malia’s voice comes at Derek. “He was taken, wasn’t he? I had no memories of Peter until now. It’s like he was missing but always here at the same time.”

He nods at her assessment. And he may not be an alpha anymore, but he gives her an order that she follows without hesitation. “We’re going to find him. He can help us and we have to make sure he’s safe. He’s the only one to come back after being taken.”

“Got it.” She makes ready to take off, but then, “Is that what brought you out here? You smelled him?”

Derek shakes his head and holds up the key ring. “These are the keys to Stiles’ Jeep.”

Her eyes grow wide. “Holy shit! You did it! Okay, let’s go, we need to find him in whatever beaten to hell form he’s crawling in by the looks of things.” She cocks her head again, thinking back on her own words. “You think the Ghost Riders tried to prevent him from leaving?”

That stops Derek short. “The what?”

“Oh no. Do you not know about the Ghost Riders?”

“You’ve got a lot of filling in to do. But first, Peter. And no, I don’t think something did this to him to prevent his escape. I think the _escape_ did this to him. It’s why no one’s returned except a werewolf.”

Malia nods. “Clever. Glad you’re back, Derek. We’ve been seriously understaffed lately.” She takes off running, Derek’s protest of _I’m not back_ stuck in his throat, along with the assessment that if Stiles had been here in his stead, he would’ve figured it out a lot sooner than Derek had.

He hears Scott whine about Malia taking off and he makes his way back to their small cadre of experts on all things weird, the cold heavy metal of Stiles’ keys clutched safe in his grip.

* * *

The energy becomes frenetic between them, around them. Time speeds up and slows down and confuses the hell out of them as Derek brings back the answer to their most immediate problem. They all know what their next step is, but it doesn’t prevent Scott and Lydia from barking orders and asking questions and remaining at an overall unacceptable hype level for Derek.

“So Peter came back then? He survived? He got out?” Scott peppers at him while Lydia parleys each question with her own, “Peter’s involved? Is he here? Please tell me he doesn’t actually need to be present for these things. Can’t he just text us the info we want and leave it at that?”

Derek still holds the keys in his hand, the metal grown warm from his body and a comforting presence. He remembers his mother then, briefly and maddingly, remembers how she would urge him to find external comforts. “You cannot always harness rage,” she would say. “You cannot always fight from within. It’s okay to use tools to help. It’s okay to use resources.”

He finally realizes how right she is the moment Derek knows he must give away the keys and leave.

“Scott,” he calls out to him again. “Here.”

He tosses the keys almost callously. He can see it in Scott’s face how little the gesture is registering to him. _Derek is flinging responsibility at him,_ is what the face says. Not, _Derek is hurling something precious, I better be worthy._

Derek shakes his head at that. Scott’s worthy. He was Stiles’ friend first.

It’s Derek who must prove his worth. He doesn’t count his ability to remember Stiles simply because he fled the country as something to lord over the rest of them.

Scott catches the keys with deft hands and recognition dawns on him. It’s not by smell, like it was for Derek, but by age old familiarity. Scott knows these keys as he does the keys to his own house, if the familiar cradling in his palm is any indication.

“I know these,” he says.

Derek wants to mull over the meaning of the way the keys fit so familiarly with him as well, if for different reasons, but he prods them along instead. “They’re to the Jeep. Get moving.”

Realization dawns on Scott. “Oh my god you have the keys? How did you get the keys? Did you have them the whole time?”

“Of course he didn’t have them the whole time, Scott, what are you thinking?” Lydia says. Then she announces, “Shotgun.”

“Fine. Wait. What about Derek?” Scott turns his baleful face to him. He tilts his crooked chin to say, _You coming or not?_

“I’m going with Malia to look for Peter. For answers. Look for clues,” he adds redundantly. His communication skills need practice, he thinks to himself. He thinks it, but it is in Stiles’ voice.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Derek wants to whack Scott on the head. “Focus on Stiles and Stiles only. We need him to come back to us. Then, when I find Peter and make him tell me how he escaped from the Ghost Riders, we’ll come up with a cohesive plan. Oh yeah. Don’t think I’m gonna let you off the hook for not telling me about the _fucking Ghost Riders, Scott.”_

Scott’s scent fills the area with a heady smell of shame and indignation. He looks down. “Oh. Right,” he says to the ground. 

But then he looks up, unfamiliar concern on his face and Lydia joins him, peering at Derek with twin inquisitive tilts to their heads.

“You sure about this?” Scott asks.

Derek looks at where Malia has run off to instead. He’s sure. They have work to do.

“We got another lead to chase. Splitting up makes sense. Let me know if you find anything. Move the Jeep to safety. Please tell me you have jumper cables on you.”

“Like I would be caught so unprepared,” Lydia says.

Scott gives a mock salute and inserts a key—and then a different key when that one doesn’t work—into the lock and turns it until the mechanical tumbler shifts and unlocks. He swings the door open wide and climbs in. Lydia’s gaze lingers on Derek longer, her pursed lips saying more than words could, before she makes her way around the vehicle to the passenger’s door.

“Any day now, Scott,” Lydia huffs.

“Right.” He reaches over the passenger seat to unlike her side of the door.

Derek leaves them then, and is gone before they can acknowledge him. He has Malia to catch up with, Peter to find, to grill. But he wishes Scott and Lydia luck all the same.

He runs: into the woods, with the smell of trees whipping around him as he follows Malia’s, and Peter’s, scent.

“Time to find dear old dad?” Malia asks when he catches up with her only a few seconds later and Derek works to school his face into a passive look. He doesn’t like thinking of Peter as anything other than a villain at worst, a weird uncle at best. But right now Peter is only a potential resource and Malia’s blunt comment jars at him as her blunt comments tend to. He appreciates them though. He finds Malia to the point and grounding in difficult times, forcing perspective when Derek would rather be lost in his own thoughts and paths of mistakes.

“We find Peter,” he confirms.


	4. Velocity

Peter ends up being easy to find. What with the blood and groans of pain and all.

Malia cradles his head in her lap where the cousins found him on the floor of the woods, his clothes and exposed skin showing signs of distress. Smoke. Fire. Charred flesh. Peter can never escape the burning, it seems. A cruel punishment, even for the likes of him.

Crueler still is the attitude that survived the chaos of whatever cursed realm Peter has crawled from.

“Oh look, my dear nephew has finally made his return from wherever he ran off to with his tail between his legs.”

Malia doesn’t give Derek a chance to respond and she doesn’t mince words: “Peter, shut the fuck up and let us help you.”

“Such a rude child.” But he lets her assess him before attempting to lift him to his feet. Together, Derek and Malia manage to carry Peter back to the safety of Derek’s SUV rental he picked up at the airport and then to his loft. There, Derek takes a breath and begins his questions. He starts and does not stop: of what they are up against, of where Peter was, of Stiles, of remnants, of anything out of the ordinary Peter might have spotted, of Stiles again. He cannot think of what information Peter may be gleaning from the line of questioning. He cannot afford to protect himself; the armor must come down if he’s to find any answers.

“Tell me everything,” Derek commands once his uncle is safely deposited on the sofa and Peter does.

He speaks of the Ghost Riders, some kind of supernatural gunslinging gang that Derek wants to scoff at for its ridiculousness or be jealous of how cool it secretly sounds. He just crosses his arms against his chest tighter, as if that can dam the emotions that threaten to spill out. As if Peter isn’t reading the cracks in his glamour with glee. Peter carries on, about holing up in an old tiled subway station, about the fear that kept everyone cowed until they too forgot what they were afraid of and how they had been stolen. The way Peter tells it, there are _hundreds_ _and hundreds_ of Beacon Hills residents lost in this place. Way more than Scott led Derek to believe.

But as fascinating as the story is, the context is lost without the acknowledgement of who Derek has come back for.

“Yeah, we got it,” Derek cuts in at one point. “Riders, and forgotten people stolen away, and an underground waystation that only exists on some kind of supernatural realm.”

Peter smiles. It is a wicked thing.

“Oh, forgive me, I forgot completely to mention Stiles, haven’t I?”

Derek waits a heart beat. Another. “You’ve seen him?”

Whatever injuries Peter sustained are on the mend now and his flair for dramatics climb with his health. He waves a hand in the air, a vague useless gesture to signify no importance. It’s done deliberately to piss Derek off and he knows it.

“I have seen your Stiles. He’s doing as well as can be,” Peter finally admits. Derek wants to hate him for it. But he’s desperate for more information and he also maybe wants to hug him for the admission.

“As well as can be,” Derek deadpans instead.

“Oh, you know. The isolating loneliness of being kept like cattle but you’re the only one who knows it. He keeps desperately trying to devise an escape plan with his fragile human capabilities. You should’ve seen the look on his face when he realized I was there.” Peter clasps his hands to his heart. “It felt like homecoming.”

“You spoke with Stiles.”

“Obviously. You found his car keys, right? I brought back a token for you. He couldn’t make the journey to be here, what with the lack of magical healing properties and what not.”

“But he’s okay?”

“No one is okay, Derek, what kind of nonsense is this.”

Derek wants to scream. “Is he whole? Healthy? Hale?”

Peter gives an incredulous look, like he can’t believe what he has witnessed from his stalwart nephew and also like he cannot believe what he has witnessed in terms of future blackmail. He has been handed something precious and Derek knows his uncle has catalogued the information for later. 

“Is he hale?” Peter repeats, sarcasm heavy in his voice. “Yes, he’s whole, you gothic romance heroine. But more importantly, is he _Hale,_ capital H? Let's address that Freudian slip and recognize that that’s up to you, to be honest." He says this with a cheeky grin, of someone who has their prey in their clutches. He considers his nephew some more. “What a conundrum you face. You tried so hard to push everyone away and yet, here you are—again. About to lose another loved one.” He tilts his head to the side as if to chastise him. “A worrying habit you have.”

Derek wants to both interrogate him and rip his throat out, ensuring he never speaks again. Peter turns his attention to Malia instead.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” he says.

Malia shrugs. “Need you to talk as much as possible if we’re to get any information.”

“Hmm, very true. Did you hear anything useful?”

“Not that I can tell. You’re still an ass and Derek’s still a stuck up wallflower. None of those help with our current situation.”

Peter cannot hide a small tug of a smile at the corner of his mouth at Malia’s assessment. "Fair enough," he concedes.

* * *

They leave Peter to heal and to rid themselves of his cryptic toxicity, but it takes them longer than they'd like to figure out their next move.

Derek and Malia make for outside in the middle of darkness, the orange glow of the streetlamps refracting against the oily sheen of the asphalt landscape. The trees stand still and silent, no wind to tempt them, nothing but a faraway rush of the few and far between cars passing on a road at this late hour. Derek and Malia are mostly strangers to each other. Raised apart, raised as almost different species. But they turn and look at each other now and realize they share so much. It's not blood. It's not that they share a relation through Peter. They are related through Stiles and that person is missing and this revelation hits both of them at the same time. There are questions they both want to ask each other, some far more delicate than they're used to dealing with. Private things with emotions and feelings. And in the orange and black shadows, they see the grief in each other's faces until Derek allows it no more and says, "Let's go see Scott."

* * *

They enter the McCall house and find Scott brimming with excitement and happiness, despite the tang of storm and blood encircling him like a hurricane.

Derek doesn’t like it at all.

“We heard him!” Scott shouts at him like a weapon and Derek finally starts to get an inkling that what he may be feeling is jealousy, plain and simple. “We spoke with him!” Scott barrages some more.

Derek takes it in stride. It’s all he can do with dawn approaching in a few short hours, sleep still eluding the pack.

“And?”

“He’s okay. I mean, he’s trapped but he’s okay. He’s alive and I remember him!”

Movement catches the corner of Derek’s eye, the small droplet of a shiny tear tracking its way down Lydia’s turned cheek. She turns her face some more to hide herself completely in the tucked away shadows of Scott’s messy room. He wonders briefly about the action, about what has happened, before letting her go.

"How did you speak to Stiles?"

"Through the old radio thing in his Jeep—"

"A CB radio," Lydia corrects.

"—We started the engine, and we heard cracking on the radio—"

"CB," Lydia says with more force.

"—And then we heard his voice calling out," Scott continues unfathomed. "I mean, it was just like, 'Hello? Hello? Anyone there?' over and over again but we heard him and got to talk to him!"

It was more than that. 

_Scott had expected to jam in the keys, to hear a click and then nothing. But Stiles apparently gave his vehicle some love before disappearing—some love in the shape of a new battery—and the engine turned over and roared to life. With it, the radio had blared along to create a chaotic cacophony before Lydia turned the radio off and they sat in a brief frozen state, a crossroads of what is happening and what do we do next? The steady rumble of the engine lulled them into a false sense of wayside, where nothing could come at them, until the illusion was shattered in the gentlest of ways._

_A quiet voice reached their ears, making the unobtrusive journey from beneath the center of the Jeep’s dash. A CB radio sat on the floor, its low orange lumens barely noticeable. But the voice was everything. Scott grabbed the hand-held receiver._

_“Stiles! It’s Scott!”_

_“Scott! Oh my god, man! You remember me!”_

_Lydia had grabbed the receiver next. “I’m here too, Stiles. I remember you, too.” Her voice was shaky, broken, but stitched together enough to be cohesive by willpower alone._

_“I remember what you said,” Lydia had continued. “I’m remembering more and more.”_

_Scott took the receiver back._

_“Where are you? How do we get you back?”_

_“I’m at a kind of waystation. Well, a subway terminal to be specific. It’s old. The destinations are places I’ve barely heard of. More like cautionary tales than actual places.”_

_“But you’ve got a radio?” Scott asked._

_“Oh! Yeah, I’m in a kind of electrical control room. The door opened and I found all of this equipment. There’s another door but it won’t open.” There was a brief silence before Stiles posed another question, “How are you contacting me?”_

_“We’re in your Jeep. We heard you on your radio.”_

_“You’re in my Jeep? Please tell me you didn’t break anything.”_

_Lydia laughed and grabbed the receiver again. “No, you idiot, we got the keys.”_

_A loud crackle emitted over the airwaves. “Peter,” Stiles finally said. “He made it.”_

_“We think so. We remember him. He had your keys?”_

_“Yeah, I gave them to him. He was convinced he could survive the trip back. The bastard was right.”_

_“Well, we’re not so sure about the survival part but we’re looking for him.”_

_“Jesus. Guess there’s no hope for the rest of us then.”_

_“We’ll find a way, Stiles. Please, just hang on, we’ll get you out.”_

_Static begins to fill the Jeep. “—gotta go—something—Find—hear me? Finish th—”_

And then the voice was gone, the Jeep silent again.

"Does he know how we should save him?" Derek asks in the present.

"Uhhh—"

"No," Lydia cuts in again. "He only knows of one way. And he said he won't survive it."

Derek nods. He knows the path she means; the one Peter took, hitchhiking with a Rider. But there's something else too.

"Lydia, you heard Stiles over the Jeep's CB?"

" _Yes._ " She closes her eyes in relief that someone finally gets it.

"He's close then."

"Proximity wise, he is. But this place sounds...well, veiled. There's a mystical boundary or something separating us from him and everyone else who's been taken."

"Look, we found Peter. He said there were hundreds of people in that waystation he was in. So I’m asking this once: who else has been taken?"

Scott, Lydia, and Malia all look at each other, guilt riddled on their faces.

Lydia takes the lead again. "We've been working lately to protect some acquaintances. Mason, I think you met him, and some others."

"Protect them from what? From the Ghost Riders?"

She looks down, her strawberry hair falling in front of her like drapes sealing a window before she looks up again. "Yes. The Wild Hunt is coming for us. For us all. And we think they've already taken many. We just didn't know anymore. We can’t keep track."

Derek glares at them. “I’ve been here less than a week and you’ve gone from _maybe one little family is missing_ to _many??”_

Scott throws his hands up. “I know! It’s crazytown, Derek! We need to figure out a way to get rid of these Riders.” His voice is desperate. “Things are getting complicated. And there are, like, Nazis involved and stuff. And I mean, like, the old German Nazis, not the local whiny white boys.”

Derek just continues to glare at Scott. He has no response to that except disdain for modern romanticization of the SS and disbelief over what new ridiculous horror walks into town.

“That’s your concern,” he says at last because he refuses to let his life become a 1980s Hollywood film with Germans as the villains. What's next? Vague Russian bad guys? “You figure out how to kill the Riders—and whoever else is in the league with them for fuck’s sake. I’m working on bringing Stiles back and that’s it.”

Lydia steps forward. “Me too.”

Derek nods at her, grateful for her help, for her solidarity, for her genius.

“Malia?” he calls out, but it’s softer than he meant. He knows what Stiles was to her in the past, what she was to him. But he’s not blind either.

Malia Tate, daughter of Peter, shifts closer to Scott. “I’m needed here,” she says.

Lydia speaks up again. “Stiles is close. I can feel it. But more importantly, I think I know where and I’ve also kinda mucked things up with the sheriff while I was,” she cocks her head to the side, her eyes searching far off for an excuse, “investigating,” she concludes.

Derek knows that look, knows that defense. "You've been busy since talking to Stiles in the Jeep. Where is it, by the way?"

Scott draws himself tall. "I parked it around the corner. Should be safe. Although I couldn't fit it into the garage so it is out in the street…"

Lydia interjects. "We moved it off school property. That's one task done."

Derek prods. "And repairing vague damage against the sheriff while trying to find his son is another?"

"And killing the school nazi!"

"Yes, Scott. No one's forgotten the local nazi." Lydia considers Scott's words. "I believe he's a job for Parrish."

"And going rogue’s a job for you?" Derek narrows his eyes in disbelief.

"I said I will help you in your search, Derek Hale. Scott and Malia are free to join us if they can spare the time." She rolls her eyes and flips her hair. "I know they have ghost riders to kill and moon eyes to make at each other."

"Well, yeah," Malia says.

"But if I need to go off on my own, I am perfectly capable of handling myself. And you know I'm not one to exaggerate."

"Okay. Fine. But if you need someone, I can go with you."

Lydia softens at that. "You commented earlier on how we’ve been busy since talking to Stiles. I know how this is going to sound but…” she takes a deep breath. “I stopped by the Stilinskis’ before coming here, after Scott and I went our separate ways at the school parking lot.” Lydia looks Derek straight in the eyes and says, “Derek, there's a crack on the wall in their house and it...it _means_ something. That’s where we should concentrate our efforts. You might have to sneak me in, though," she adds to herself but the wolves hear anyways.

Derek ignores the last comment for now and sifts through her information. "A crack? Where?"

"By the bathroom. In the upstairs—no, wait. Ground floor hallway. There's no upstairs. But I...I could've sworn I walked up stairs."

"The hallway with the bedrooms? By the guest bathroom?"

Lydia nods.

And immediately, Derek clues in. "Stiles' room. That's Stiles' bedroom. It was upstairs across from the bathroom."

“So what? The house completely rearranged itself after the Wild Hunt took him? There’s no second floor, Derek!”

“Stiles’ room _was_ on the second floor and I know from experience because climbing in through his window was a bitch.”

Lydia purses her lips at that admission, eyebrows raised in surprise, in judgement, in laughter. "Yes, it’s definitely a job for you then. I will help when I can, but. I made a mess.” She raises her hands out in front slightly, looking down at her fingertips. They’re a bit pink from friction. Derek wonders if Lydia’s been prodding at the supposed crack. She sighs at her hands, then drifts closer to Derek, lowering her voice. “It has to be you, I can feel it. The sheriff's wife even asked for you. Asked if you were doing okay. Said to stop by when you’ve got a chance."

“Tomorrow. After I check in on Deaton. Then I’ll go over and check on the crack.”

“I’ll talk with Parrish and then I’ll come straight to the house, okay?” She turns her gaze beyond Derek. “Scott, Malia,” she announces, “get some sleep. You’re coming with me and I will scream you both to death if we leave any later than ten.”

“But it’s a school day,” Scott says and it’s a full on whine.

“Scott, the nazi is at the school. You do not want to go there. Besides. We’ve got other problems to deal with.”

Malia shrugs. “I’m down. Any excuse not to go to class is a valid excuse.”

“That’s the spirit.” Lydia pats Malia on the shoulder, then nods at Derek before leaving.

* * *

Sleep doesn’t come for Derek. Not this time.

He waits out the hours back at his loft, pacing, thinking, remembering. He tampers down on his instinct to call people up and bark orders at them. There would be no plan, only the simple and direct _Find Stiles_ distinctly forced at whoever had answered his call. These days there are none to answer his call, no one he has authority over. These days Derek is listless and anchorless and he drifts. He is standing still in his terribly lit kitchen but he drifts all the same.

If Stiles were here, Derek realizes that he would take orders from him, that Derek would follow his instincts. If Stiles were here, Derek would help make Scott and Malia and Lydia and the baby wolves take orders from him. He would…

Derek realizes he would do so much for Stiles if he were standing here right now. He would even be his second, his beta, despite Stiles being so painfully human. Just human. And a spark of something else, like a secret ingredient that makes the whole dish.

Jesus Christ, Derek is _lost._

Stiles may be the one taken but Derek is gone on Stiles Stilinski. And the knowledge of what he feels makes him want to weep. But he cannot afford to mourn what he never recognized until too late. Until Stiles was kidnapped with slim chances of his return. Until Derek suspected Lydia of finally learning to love Stiles back.

He’s always too late.

He will not stop though, he owes Stiles that at least. He will bury any emotions deep in his gut as he usually does until he forgets how to access them, forgets how to bring them to the surface. He will find Stiles. He will bring him back alive and safe and he will not stand in the way of whatever he and Lydia are developing. He loves Stiles too much. He respects Lydia too much. Oh, god.

He finds the medium roast coffee he purchased in a cupboard and roots around for the percolator. He fills the cistern with water and the basket with grounds, then eases the pitcher over the kitchen flame. He bought the coffee on a whim, just like the latte the other day, not needing the stimulant to aid in any way. But the smell is comforting, the noise is companionship, and when Derek pours himself a cup the first sip is a promise to the one person who always smelled of the roasted aroma, who Derek would find at night hunched over his laptop, a warm brew in reach of his hand.

Derek takes another sip and renews the promise. The whole cup is dedicated to Stiles in the end.

* * *

The morning is all systems go. There is nothing else to do, no distractions to be had. The loft building is empty, save for him and possibly Peter. Derek’s avoided the man since their last chat. When he walks to the city center, downtown Beacon Hills is mostly empty save for him.

And he walks back into Alan Deaton’s clinic, hoping that the place is also not empty save for him. He’s got a veterinarian to converse with: the time for tentative questions and strategic answers are over.

“Ghost Riders,” Derek says to the back of the vet’s white lab coat. “What do you know about them?”

Dr. Deaton slowly turns around and finishes the notation on a patient’s chart before answering. Derek can’t help but sigh in relief that the man is here at all. 

“You’re sure then?” Deaton asks. “My contact thought it sounded like a possibility, but was hesitant to voice the suggestion.” He closes the file folder and gently drops it on the countertop. He shakes his head at Derek. “This is not good.”

“How do we beat them?”

“That, I do not know.”

Derek works really hard not to glower.

“We have missing people. The Riders have taken someone important to the pack. Someone we need desperately if we are to kill them.”

Dr. Deaton considers Derek for some time. It feels like a lifetime. “But you remember him,” he finally says.

“Yes. Aren’t you listening?”

“I am, Derek. Let me tell you this: if it is Riders who have come for Beacon Hills, then the chances of surviving this are null. However, my contact did mention rifts between our world and these Riders’ world. Rifts that allow passage back and forth.”

“Yeah, I know about the rifts. Peter came back through one by tagging along with a Rider. He barely survived. Stiles can’t survive that.”

“I do not believe that is the only way to create a rift. My contact told me that a forgotten person was able to come back to them safely. They had been able to travel back after enough people _remembered them_.”

Derek stares at Deaton, considering what the man has said. “You think we can open a rift. A safe rift. For Stiles to walk through—unharmed—and return to our lives just like that?”

“I think you being here, Mr. Hale, means that a rift has already begun to form. You just need to find it now.”

Alan Deaton, vague, infuriating veterinarian Alan Deaton, who knows so much but often yields so little, is wrong.

Derek doesn't need to find it. He knows exactly where this supposed rift is opening.

“The crack in the wall,” he says, recalling Lydia’s conversation only a few hours prior.

“Well, I suppose anything could be a rift, sometimes just a shimmer of a portal in a glade—”

Derek doesn’t hear anything else. He’s already out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Stiles. Fuckin finally.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and any comments are appreciated! Unbeta'd but a labor of love <3
> 
> This started as a writing exercise in catharsis, focusing on Derek not interacting with any of the Wild Hunt plot to just focus on finding Stiles, and kinda turned into a love letter to the places I love: Central America, Western Australia, but especially the North Bay. My personal head canon for the geographical location of Beacon Hills comes from a recollection of Stiles having a 707 area code and Derek and others having the SF 415 area code. Feel free to disregard or sub for your own head canons lmao


End file.
